I find Debian easy to use too but when I first started OpenVPN, the only tut I had is for CentOS, then eventually I finally had it working with Debian. So I might use Debian from now on on OpenVPN installs...

CentOS is like dead. Try Scientific Linux if you do prefer the so-called "secure" yet out-dated system.

Debian is okay.

Arch is my favorite. On OVZ, Arch only used ~5MB RAM by default. On KVM it's only ~10MB. But using up-to-date Arch on OVZ is quite challenging - you need to know some tricks to make it work properly, since it has latest packages and sometimes you will have trouble if you upgrade. But once you know it, Arch is the best distro in my opinion.

I have 3 OVZ, 1 KVM, and 1 DockStar, all with Arch installed. I'm happy with Arch.

Kairus said: How did you install it? Using alien to convert rpm? It's almost a year since its release, and there's still no package under Ubuntu, kind of lame.

From 3rd-party PPAs or source. Not only is MySQL out-dated, but also a lot more on most distros. For example, it's a joke to have the so-called "secure" CentOS installed but need to compile tons of packages from source even with EPEL enabled - and you are supposed to install them under /opt. I know sometimes RHEL/CentOS/SL may have more driver support though.

I am always wondering how can a person ensure the system is "safe" unless he/she RTFM in detail of EVERY package that needs to be compiled and knows EVERY single parameter passed to configure? Even if it's doable it's still like a monkey patch, and it's a shame for the distro's package management system.

Debian is probably the easier one to use and learn and has more polished desktop GUIs. Redhat is a bit more odd but has wide hosting/VPS support due to major apps like cPanel and SolusVM only running on Redhat distros.

@LivingSouL good luck with that one, ever since I got my vps with 123Systems I asked for a Debian 6 template, and it took them almost a year to bring it. According to their support they only use SolusVM provided templates, so no custom templates for us.

@LivingSoul: Maybe I should ask 123Systems to update their Arch as well. They still have 2010 version of Arch. sigh

123Systems is complete junk. I have an account there, been waiting 5+ months for Debian6. They just sent an email out about updated distros, in short I didn't even waste my time with them after being told quarter after quarter that "we will review distros end of each quarter" or some rubbish like that.

In short, a month ago they still only had Debian5, my VPS spends more time offline or randomly ends up offline than it does online.

@thekreek said: @LivingSouL good luck with that one, ever since I got my vps with 123Systems I asked for a Debian 6 template, and it took them almost a year to bring it. According to their support they only use SolusVM provided templates, so no custom templates for us.

One time I received a VPS with Debian 6. But for some reason I reinstall again when I receive my boxes. But no Debian 6. And then I asked about reinstalling it, and got KICKED because suppossedly they don't have Debian 6 available... LOL?

@yomero said: Well, by kicked I mean, they rejected my requests because I am an useless client XD

Oh, make no mistake, every client is valuable for them (in order to struggle to get their bills paid). My guess would be they rejected your requests out of either laziness or incompetence (in that Andrew likely doesn't know -how- to offer additional ISOs).

@Basil said: Personally I think a sizable number of young(er) people started out with Ubuntu and just want to stick with something similar.

At the same time few years ago, rpm was crap, there was no yum and apt-get was so nice to use - so there are also people who started a few years ago using redhat/whatever, who went to debian as it was working great + had a great social contract / non commercial commitment to free software and stayed to that :D

IMO CentOS is more tailored to be a server distro thus many server mgmtn tools are working out of the box. It is also widely supported as VPS distro, having somewhat a lot of scripts, programs (i.e CPanel), and tuts mostly made to work on CentOS

With Ubuntu, you'll need some more apt-get and a little hack. But that's all.

It's just matter of personal preference. I was always more Debian guy and I use it as personal preference since woody which means almost 10 years. I don't use other distributions unless I really have to (i.e. CentOS/cPanel).

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche